Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

Much like the series is based on two separate Jin Yong works, this series can be divided into two parts in terms of quality. The first half was actually surprisingly good for a Wong Jing production. The reason? Most of the story was based (although sometimes loosely) on the novel.

Then after the character Cheng Ling Su's death, and the story flashed forward 7 years, all the previous good work was flushed down the toilet. The writers took "artistic liberty" with the story, and came up with a non-sensical mess that insults the viewing audience's intelligence. Believability and logic are shoved aside to create "drama" and "tension." Unfortunately, all it accomplished was to result in a story that's neither dramatic nor tense, but instead inconsistent and reeks of stupidity.

Pros:

Fight scenes. This series foregoes silly flying around and exploding ground for believability looking combat.

Strong performances out of certain actors: Alex Fong as Miao Ren Feng, Patrick Tam as Tian Gui Nong, and Gillian Chung as Cheng Ling Su.

Cons:

Idiotic storyline. The second half of the story, especially after 7 years elapsed (about the time gap between the two novels), was a shameful mess of gunk. The writers basically threw a bunch of ideas at the wall and went with what stuck. If I were to go more into specific detail into why different parts of the plot line made no sense, I would need to take two weeks off from my job.

Insulting characterizations. The character of Hu Fei became a moron who apparently lost his marbles after years of living in a high altitude cut off oxygen flow to his brain. All he does is scowl and look pisssed off all the time and his brain seemed to have been fried, evident in his utter inability to do anything but act impulsively. All Miao Ruo Lan does is cry and annoy.

Lazy makeup. Little attempt is made to portray some characters as having aged at all from the beginning of the series to the end, which emcompasses nearly 30 years of time. They must have found the fountain of youth.

In conclusion, the first half of the story was a 7.5, but the second half was a 1. Overall, it's just a 3 because the second half was so awful that it disproporationately wipes away any good in the first half. This series could have been very good if they had cut it down to 30 episodes and excised all the stupidity that came after certain characters fell off the cliff (none suffered even one broken bone by the way) and the whole story went to hell. I guess they did want to give Ady An more screentime, but they could have done that by casting her as Yuan Zi Yi.